The Kremlin File

The day was bright, the sky an innocent blue, and the sea calm. But the beaches were like graveyards of little boats, and the pretty ranch houses had been destroyed. Walls were down; roofs lay tom and twisted many yards away; and furniture littered lawns. The first building we passed at close range, the old Poinciana resort, was nothing more than a collapsed heap of timber. Noah’s boys dropped off there to root in the wreckage. Beyond it, the native village was a mess — empty-eyed people wandered around, picking up a scrap of something, dropping it, then going to another.

The ancient fort on the hill, which had weathered many other blows over the last couple of hundred years, had survived this one.

Government Plaza was in fairly good shape, but the glass was gone from the windows and the grounds were covered with fallen trees and litter. The soldiers in the area were unarmed and dazed, moving around like zombies in a feeble effort to clean up the grounds. There were other soldiers in the business section, working under junior officers. They glanced at us as we rolled by but made no move to stop us. With their colonel gone, they were in limbo, without authority to send down orders.

At the Sawyer Grand LaClare all the landscaping was uprooted, large trees strewn around like so many twigs. The late afternoon sun glittered red on the piles of splintered glass that surrounded the building. Beyond it, the oily harbor was nearly empty. Only a few small boats floated, hull up, on the long, smooth swells. The water was an ugly, dirty color, heavy with sand. A boom off some wreckage drifted up against the shore, and more rigging fouled the white beach. There were no guards anywhere around.

I pulled up in front of the main entrance, and we got down with our guns. Jerome, I assumed, would be laid out in state in the lobby or casino, with an honor guard watching over him. I would have to get rid of them. But I was wrong. Our feet crunched across the broken glass, and we walked right on in without being stopped.

The lobby was empty, and so was the casino. The entire hotel was a shambles.

“Chip’s office maybe?” Mitzy suggested.

We went that way. The black hall attendant was not behind the cashier’s desk. To my surprise the electric lock worked, and we went through to the hall. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The button controlling Capolla’s door opened it. Jerome was not laid out there, either, but the money he had looted was. I heard a deep sigh of relief beside me. When I looked at Mitzy her red tongue was slowly circling her lips.

“The Miami boys will be glad to know this, at least,” she said. “I expect Sawyer will reopen.”

“But where is Jerome’s body?” I wondered aloud. Mitzy thought it might have been taken to Capolla’s penthouse.

“You go find out, Nick. I’d better hang around in here. This town is going to begin coming to sometime soon, and I wouldn’t want this bundle to disappear now.”

“I don’t like to leave you alone,” I told her. “There could be a mob.”

Her lips curled. “The door locks from the inside, and it can’t be opened from the hall. This place is a vault. You know how to use the remote control on the elevator?”

I did. I had watched when we first used it. She closed and locked the sliding panel after me, and I hit the button, got into the cage, and tapped the “up” switch. The elevator started to climb. I didn’t even feel the car stop. But the door opened silently, and I stepped out onto the deep carpet.

The movement in the little entry hall was too fast for me. I’d barely caught it in my peripheral vision when a hand holding a gun came slashing down at my head. I reacted instinctively and ducked, but the blow caught my neck, paralyzing my arm. My machine gun thudded on the floor, and I couldn’t bend my elbow to reach the Luger — couldn’t even snap out my stiletto.

I jumped back, clawed with my left hand for the wrist that held the gun, and got a grip on. I stood looking right into Jerome’s eyes.

So he wasn’t dead. He had a huge bump on his forehead. It must have kept him near the edge a long while, but there was nothing ghostly about his muscle. He was a fine physical specimen. And he could fight as dirty as I could.

While my right hand still hung limp and my left held his arm, he threw a hard fist into my chin and a knee into my crotch. I sagged against him in excruciating pain. But I had to get that gun away from him. Our raised arms came down as I slipped toward the floor. Suddenly he released his grip to let me fall. I went to my knees. He jerked his wrist free, fumbling with his gun to take aim. I buried my mouth in his leg, and clamped my teeth on him, and held on. He screamed and bent double over my back. The gun fell to the floor. I ground my teeth sideways. As he screamed again, I felt hot blood running through his pants. Then my fingers found the gun. I heaved up, dumped him over my shoulders, turned on one knee, and shot him. It spoiled the exquisite agony on his contorted face.